Article - Americans Abroad - Part Three

In
the third of my series of articles, I look at how American players fare in
matches on US soil. This research project was given to me by a Twitter
follower – so if you would like me to analyse/research something for you then
please get in touch. There will be a number of articles and resources
added between now and the start of the season in January.

I’m
splitting this analysis into a number of categories – US male players in the
top 150 playing non-US/Canadian main draw ATP events only (split into European
and Asian/Australasian events), those same players playing US based events,
South American players with any rank playing European Challengers (this
research area was specifically suggested) and US female players in the top 150
playing non-US/Canadian WTA events (split into European and Asian/Australasian
events) and those same players playing US based events.

For
clarity, my policy on retirements here was void them if the first set wasn’t
completed, and I’m using Pinnacle Sports starting prices for my analysis.

There
are currently 16 US players in the ATP top 100 with John Isner – ranked 16 –
leading the pack. Only him and Sam Querrey are currently ranked inside
the top 75 in the world.

Sam Querrey has an equally poor record in the US as in other parts of the world...

We’ve
seen already that US players have a horrific record in general both in Europe
and Asia/Australasia – how does that compare to their record in America?

As
we can see from the above figures, on the whole backing US players in American
events generates a very small 2.08% return on investment. Considering the Pinnacle ‘juice’ is several
percent, this is solid without being anything near spectacular – and not worth
adopting as a blanket strategy.

Furthermore,
without John Isner’s incredible stats being included the combined results drop
to 288 matches, 128 wins with a loss of £1655 being incurred (ROI of -5.75%)
which would indicate the lower level players do not compete as well as the
market expects them to on home soil.

As
mentioned in the previous paragraph, Isner’s results at US venues is
magnificent and a 32.53% ROI generated from 74 matches is reason enough to
consider backing him almost blindly when he plays in America. Looking at his results in this article and in
the previous two articles, it’s obvious that he gains the vast majority of his
wins and ranking points in the US and I’d be highly surprised if that changed
in the near future.

As
for Sam Querrey, his ROI of -11.21% over the sample shows he is not such a
viable betting proposition. In fact in
his last 50 matches anywhere he has a ROI of -20.2% which reflects the fact
that currently he is quite strongly over-rated by the market.

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